#DianneFeinstein, centrist stalwart of the Senate, dies at 90
A trailblazer for women in politics, she led the Intelligence Committee and helped mold the federal bench. Amid health setbacks, she faced calls to resign.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/09/29/dianne-feinstein-california-senator-dead/
Excerpt from the above mentioned LATimes article:
“In the last seconds of his life, #GeorgeMoscone poured a drink for his killer & prepared to give him a pep talk. There’s life after politics, he began telling #DanWhite. You have a family to worry about. It will all work out.
“The mayor had no way of knowing that the man standing before him carried a loaded Smith & Wesson .38 under his suit coat.
#DianneFeinstein
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-11-21-vw-59151-story.html
“He couldn’t have known that White had slipped into a basement window at City Hall to avoid metal detectors. Or that he had ducked into a side door of the mayor’s office so that two policemen outside didn’t even know that he had penetrated the inner office.
“All Moscone knew was that White had demanded a Monday morning meeting, mins before the mayor would announce Horanzy’s nomination. And it would have been out of character for Moscone to refuse.
“After offering the fmr supervisor a drink, he turned to sit on the couch in his back office. It was 10:50AM.
“White later said he heard a roaring, rushing sound in his head as Moscone talked. The mayor lit a cigarette. White began firing. 2 bullets ripped through Moscone’s chest &, when he fell to the floor, White leaned down & pumped 2 more into his head, execution style.
“Standing over the dead man, he reloaded his gun, then walked down a long marble corridor & asked to meet w/ #HarveyMilk.
“The 2 men entered an empty cubicle & 5 shots rang out. #Feinstein heard them, saw White race past her & smelled gunpowder. Then she found #HarveyMilk’s body, stomach-down on the floor.
“‘I intuitively knew that he was dead, you can tell,’ she recalls. ‘I tried to get a pulse & my finger went into a bullet hole in his wrist.’
“Pandemonium set in. W/a stunned crowd looking on, #Feinstein spoke the words she has never forgotten: ‘As president of the Board of Supervisors, it is my duty to inform you that Mayor Moscone & Supervisor Milk have been shot. And killed.’”
More from The WaPo:
…#Feinstein won her #Senate seat in what became known as the #YearOfTheWoman, an election that sent 24 new women to the #House of Representatives & brought the total number of female senators to 6.
The precipitating event was the 1991 confirmation hearings of #SCOTUS nominee #ClarenceThomas, who became the second Black justice on the high court.
The proceedings pitted #AnitaHill, a fmr colleague of #ClarenceThomas’s who also was #Black, against an all-#male, all-#White Senate #Judiciary Cmte that, in the view of many #women, did not engage respectfully with Hill’s allegations that Thomas had #SexuallyHarassed her.
“Every woman that watched that changed,” #Feinstein told the New York Times in 2018. “I think change happened at that moment.”
“The lesson Dianne took from this craziness was that she had been right — that all this #polarization & bitterness that was extant in the town had now led to these murders,” her biographer, Jerry Roberts, once told the New Yorker magazine, referring to the assassinations of #Moscone & #Milk. “That’s when she started talking about how the #center is so important.”
The cmte’s 6,700-pg “#torture report,” an executive summary of which was publicly released in 2014, alleged that #CIA #interrogation techniques — incl’g #waterboarding, #SleepDeprivation, physical #abuse, #confinement in a coffin-size box & #threats against suspects’ #families — had been far more #brutal, more #widespread & less effective than the agency previously claimed.
“I have never believed that people elected me to represent this big state just to go and be a rubber stamp,” #Feinstein told the San Francisco Chronicle. However, she continued, “the president is owed some consideration to get his own team, provided that team is qualified.”
Feinstein encountered perhaps the most intense criticism of her career while serving as ranking #Democrat on the #Judiciary Cmte in 2018, during the firestorm surrounding #SCOTUS nominee Brett M. #Kavanaugh.
Some liberals perceived #Feinstein as insufficiently tough during the confirmation proceedings of #AmyConeyBarrett, whose nomination by #Trump after the death of Justice #RuthBaderGinsburg gave #conservatives a 6-3 edge on the high court.
…Feinstein announced in late 2020 that she would step down as the top #Democrat on the #Judiciary Cmte. There were signs that, at 87, she was experiencing memory difficulties…. In 2022, she suffered the loss of her husband of 42 yrs, investor Richard Blum.
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